


To Minrathous city of magisters, and we shall tear down, The unassailable gates

by hellelf



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gen, Language, Slaves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-08-24 01:57:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8351821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellelf/pseuds/hellelf
Summary: Once, there was a teenager in love and an slave in a cell.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Quick drabble for a head canon I have.

_Clink, clink, clink, clink._

With every tiny tap, the people in the cell all flinched. It wasn’t a loud noise, not where there were cries from other cells, shouts from some distant area, the breathing of hundreds.

_Clink, clink, clink, clink._

But the eighteen people in the cells crowded away from its bars, huddled as far from the man lounging next to the bars. He was peering down the hall, towards the guards’ room and away from the exit to the topside. Back against the wall, right leg stretched in front of him while the left was bent. One arm was propped on that while the other was against the bar. Wrapped around the outside of one with is hand against the next bar.

_Clink, clink, clink, clink._

A nail tapped against the metal, flipped between his knuckles so it would hit the bar at each finger. Grated against all of their ears. He’d taken up that position three days ago, after being thrown in here with the rest of them. The tapping had been unending. And finally, less than three hours ago, the twentieth person in their cell had snapped. A big brutal man, scarred from the one near his hairline likely right down his body to his toes, had loomed over the man next to the bar and growled that he’d better stop that shit. His arm had been grabbed.

_Clink, clink, clink, clink._

He’d stopped. It had been very quiet when he stopped. Then it had been very loud, flesh against flesh, a gurgled scream and a sickening crunch followed by a thud. The man had taken his position up again. They all had fled to their current positions, away from him and the blood pooling.

_Clink, clink, clink, clink._

No one had come to collect the body.

_Clink, clink, clink, clink._

The guards had hardly glanced in when they rotated shifts.

_Clink, clink, clink, cl-_

The grind of metal on metal made them all jump, press against the wall and each other. Its followed by a tiny tap. The man sighs and reaches through the bars to pick up the nail.

_Clink, clink, clink, clink._

“Anyone else hungry?” he asks glancing at them. His blue eyes almost glow in the gloom. No one says anyone. “No? Just me? Odd lot you are.” Boots on stone come to them. “Ah, lunch!”

_Clink, clink, clink, clink._

A beautiful human woman stops outside their cell, and she looks both ways with cold efficiency. Behind her, a man is gripping his staff watching the guards around them more closely than the slaves in the cells.

“Good morning,” the woman says politely. She has shiny long black hair, most pulled away from her face by a single golden clip. Her robes aren’t the ridiculous gaudy things that most Magisters wear and proceed to complain about getting muck on when they enter the cell blocks. She looks rather plain with the barest of makeup and likely not in her twenties. Equally, the man with her isn’t very old either. His black hair is cropped short, tanned face a mask of cold but his body is tense, ready to spring, to flee. Neither, the man on the floor decides, are here to play games.

_Clink, clink, clink, clink._

The man’s brown eyes fall to his hands even as the woman smiles a seductive little smile. She address the cell block when she speaks. “My name is Aurelia, Heir of House Soldati.” Whispers up and down the corridor come up. Aurelia Soldati was the single richest woman in the entire country, eligible for marriage in less than a year, though her hand was sworn to another House. Her father was known for his cruelty but she was known more for her uncaring of the class lines when she took a lover. The Soldati family owned the entire wine making business in the country and also owned the very Market place they were standing in. She turns slightly, smiling at her companion. “And this is Halward of House Pavus, my future husband.”

_Clink, clink, clink, clink._

His eyes don’t move off the man and his tapping. “We’ve come up with a little issue, I’m afraid. A small thing, you see,” the woman, the girl really, says fluttering her eye lashes at a slave in the next cell. “We require some help to fix the issue and settle a bet. Who would like to help?” Everyone falls silent besides their breath and most of that is held. “No one wants to get out of these dark pits?”

_Clink, clink, clink, clink._

She finally looks down at him too. He’s a mess, with blood splattered across his gaunt face and ragged clothes. His own black hair is greasy and knotted, and he’s pulled it into a literal knot when he’d finally been unchained, just to get it out of his face. His ears are on perfect display to the two humans, pointed as a knife.

_Clink, clink, clink, clink._

“What about you?” she asks fluttering her eyelashes. His own eyes stay focused on the guard’s room, the overseer watching from down the hall. “I’ll make it worth your time, rattus.” Behind her, the man’s lips tighten. “It’s just a little, bitty thing.”

_Clink, clink, clink, clink._

“Lia,” Halward warns as she steps closer.

“It’ll be fun. Especially if you’re the one who made that body in there,” she purrs, crouching down.

_Clink, clink, clink, clink._

Her hand reaches for his. In an instance, he grabs her and jerks her into the cell bars. Hard and fast, he holds the nail right up to her throat. The guards start yelling but Pavus shouts back at them about the nail, if she dies you’re all dead too.

“But you’d be so much fun as you gurgle the last of your tainted blood, darling,” he purrs as she gasps at the impact. He shoves her back, away, onto her ass. He slumps back into his lounge. “Fuck off princess. We all know you’re just looking for a few good cocks who you can bleed next week when you’re bored again.”

“You-“ she starts to say. Electricity skitters across the floor, from the bottle on Pavus’ staff. It hits each guard, snakes across the floor and gets the overseer and whoever is in the room with him. They all drop to the ground. The girl huffs and stands, brushing herself off. “Can you believe-“

“Do you want to die in shackles or die fighting?” Pavus asks loudly. “We are here to release you all. I will not lie, this is to be a distraction but if you help us, you’ll not be caught like fish in a net to be served up next meal.” That gets everyone’s attention, people pressing up against the bars of their cells. Most in this block are criminals or foreigners, they’ve tasted freedom. Everyone in his cell still stays at the back. Pavus looks down at him.

“Why?” he asks the two.

“I told you,” Lia starts.

“Your pretty mouth would look better around a cock then around words,” he cuts her off. He points the nail at the boy. “So would his.” The boy’s ears go slightly red but he glares. “But what do two pretty little Altus children hardly out of their nappies need with two hundred slaves causing a distraction?”

“We’re going to free a damsel in distress,” Halward says after a heart-beat.

“Very pretty?”

Teeth are barred. “She’s mine.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” He pushes himself up, jams the nail into the lock, lifts slightly and lets the bars swing open. The two Altus look at him shocked. “Call me Fealas. It’s been a while since I played the revolting slave.”

“We, ah, we have a plan,” Pavus says trying to get over his surprise.

“I’m sure.” It’s a shitty plan. Fealas makes it better. It’s surprisingly simple to overtake the Market and then six hundred slaves are spilling out into the streets of Minrathous. Fealas sticks close to the Pavus brat while Aurelia fucks off somewhere so they don’t both fall at the same time.

“So this girl,” Fealas says pulling his stolen sword out of the back of a city guard. Pavus stumbles away from the person he’s burning alive, gagging a little. Such a weak stomach for an Altus! “How pretty?”

“She’s like the sun,” Pavus gasps. Fealas picks up a water skin and hands it to him.

“You know that it’s a giant ball of gas that’s on fire right?” he questions. “Does she like you?”

“We’re in love,” he snaps, jerking the water away. “I love her. She’s perfect, the Maker’s will personified. She is sweet and kind and-“

“And a slave?” Fealas guesses. Oh yes, this boy fell for a slave. He wonders if she’s a sex slave, one who seduced him too well and now they’re in trouble. “Where is she being kept, exactly?”

“The Black Spire.”

“The _Divine’s throne?_ Gods bless, kid,” he swears. “What did you get her into?”

“My brother said she used blood magic to control me, if you must know,” Halward hisses as a new troop of guards, local Altus ones by the looks, come around a corner.  Fealas decides not to ask if she had. Halward seems to have a temper, since he just wiped six men off the face of Thedas with hardly a sweat.

Later, the next morning as the light crests the eastern docks, he has to concede, the girl is very pretty and only about six month pregnant. They had three months to wait for her labor before it would be revealed to be Halward’s or another man’s. He rolls his eyes, leaning heavily on a stack of crates while the two Altus speak with a ship captain, a young Templar watching the sea wall just in case. Aurelia walks off after paying the Captain leaving Halward and his lady love, with the Templar, pale and shaky. Blood is swelling out of a poor bandage around his wrist. He’d used blood magic, apparently, to escape the Divine and his personal Knights with the girl. A Templar using blood magic, how quaint.

“I have never loved you,” Halward shouts, suddenly. He shoves the slave towards the gangplank. “All of this was- was just for my child. So get on the boat and leave, Rayyan or-or else!”

“Please, please,” she begs tears welling up. Fealas can see the Templar winch. Poor kid, having to watch this tragedy in the making. “I don’t want to go. I don’t want to be parted from you or my home. We-we could still- you could keep me! As your pet. Everyone will- will think-“ Pavus back hands her. She stumbles away. One step, two steps.

“Do as you’re ordered,” Halward hisses. She flees up into the boat. Moments later, the lines are cut and it’s on its way. Halward watches it, until it’s gone in the distance. Radonis, the Templar, goes to his side. They speak, too low for Fealas to hear. Then magic wells up around them and Radonis blasts his friend into the harbor. Fealas laughs, even as the young man storms away. He’s still chuckling when ten minutes later, Halward drags himself out of the water.

“My new friend,” Fealas says kneeling next to the panting Magister. “That was a very brave thing to do. Come, let us go find some fried fish and ale.” He glances up at the city, the smoke, the riots still happening. “Though, perhaps it will be grilled like the city.”

“It’ll never happen again,” Halward swears, still panting.

“It will,” he disagrees sadly. “It has happened for a long time and will keep happening many years after.”

“No.” Breathe, breathe. “Never again. I won’t let it happen again. For her.” What might be a sob, if future Magisters knew what crying was. It was a good thing he was so wet and the salt of the sea got to his eyes or the redness and drops on his face might be mistaken as crying. “For a future that won’t be.”

Fealas watches him. A wreaked man, not the first he’s seen. He’s been in that position too. The raging at society, so long ago. He looks back up at the city, the golems on the shoreline, the citadels soring into the sky even above the smoke of Pavus’ firebombs. Maybe…

“Ta, you try,” he decides far from Minrathous, in a different city entirely. “Do not falter, Halward of House Pavus. I think you could start it this new future.” Change is slow, he knows, but one Altus saving a slave, loving her, that could be a start.

**Author's Note:**

> This occurs a few years before Dorian's birth and is a personal head canon. Halward is only 17 here and its very much a sketch of a lot of other events that led up to this and to Halward Pavus in the future. Fealas is an OC with his own vast background which I probably won't ever release. 
> 
> Its unbeta'd and done quickly so sorry for any mistakes!


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